I've quite a bit of gear to wire up and buying cables off the shelf will get very expensive very quickly, especially as some will only need to patch up short distances within a rack.

I've been thinking of the feasibility of making my own cables, buying a few metres of cable and some TRS 1/4" jack ends. Does anybody have experience of doing this and know where to get good quality supplies for cheap and point me towards a quick tutorial on how to wire the jacks? I'm relatively ok with my hands in DIY terms so should be ok once I've learnt the process.

Would this cable work?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/van-damme...-pro-patch-cable-black-priced-per-metre-n94jt

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2016

If you are using balanced for all of the cables the actual cable quality is not so important as if it were unbalanced due to the way balanced works.

I have built my own unbalanced to balanced pre-amps and was pretty impressed with how you can send signals through long cables with little degradation.

For most of my electronic projects I end up using eBay and find cheap components from China.

I just did a quick search for some XLR connectors and found this ... (wish I had of seen this when I was looking!)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-x-XLR-...hash=item3d178e05ad:m:mGDwEuPB7vqCUgoT3AlSgjg

I will also have a look for some decent length of cable. I will be back. Probably!

And the same cable on eBay ... (slightly cheaper)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Van-Damme...ff7e821&pid=100005&rk=2&rkt=6&sd=391263316139

Shop around I say.

 

You will learn to solder in no time. The only thing that many people won't tell you is to buy a high quality soldering gun. When you go cheap on the gun, soldering becomes a burden with slow heating and response. You'll hate it. The only one thing to add after this is to practice soldering "fakes" until you get a clean job. Otherwise, you risk having signal leak through a working but poorly put together solder job.

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2016

here is a neat pinout overview http://www.rane.com/note110.html

agree to 100% with mercurysoto.
soldering must be done quick, as you might destroy onsulation on both cable and plugs heating for too long on the metal

consider using a multimeter (resistance metering) for checking your finished work, and possible signal leaks on molten insulation.

avoid "CCA" copper clad aluminium cables (aluminium core with copper on top), prefer pure copper OFC (oxygen free copper). the shield mesh quality makes in most cases the price difference - for home use you can go with any mesh - for stage the mesh quality is of significant importance

 

Rane has a load of useful technical docs, try http://www.rane.com/note110.html for cable wiring details.

I've always used Neutrik plugs for cables i made although it can get expensive using them, i've never had a noisy cable or a failed cable while using them.